"Words that make actions speak louder."
Oh, the irony. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates was on Capitol Hill today telling a Senate appropriations subcommittee that Congress has to approve a $33 billion supplemental war funding request by July 4 or else “we begin to have to do stupid things,” the Senate did an incredibly stupid thing itself: By a vote of […]
It was a fight to the finish between two heavyweight contenders. In this corner, representing the big Wall Street interests and wearing green trunks the color of money, Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts. And in this corner, representing common sense and the American people, wearing red, white, and blue trunks, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota. […]
The headline of my local paper today is Obama: Act on clean energy. (But a different headline online – do they do that just to mess up bloggers?) In the speech the President paid homage to President Carter’s efforts to change America’s energy policies, saying, For decades, we have known the days of cheap and […]
In his column concerning last month’s jobs number, George Will does a nearly "Noonan-eque" job of spreading disorientation and doubt about what government should do— if anything — about chronic unemployment, delivering a simple-but-subtle message: Nothing can be done. Of course, that’s true. There’s a lot that can and should be done, immediately, to address […]
As you can see in today’s Progressive Breakfast, interpretations of the President’s speech ranged widely. Carbon cap is dead. Or alive. Serious push for other clean energy standards and investments. Or desire to take anything they can get. Pragmatic. Or cop-out. The fact that the speech can be interpreted so many different ways is part […]
Hours before the President will address the nation about the need to end our dependence on fossil fuels, two new studies bolstered the case for the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act, the comprehensive climate protection and clean energy jobs bill. The Environmental Protection Agency released its official analysis and found, according to the Kerry-Lieberman press release […]
It is rare for a President to deliver an Oval Office address on a subject that is not related to war. When a President does so, he signals to the nation that the problem at hand is not only of the utmost importance, but requires the nation to come together to fix it. This does […]
“The moral equivalent of war.” Tonight President Obama will talk about the Gulf oil catastrophe, and, hopefully, overall energy and climate policy. A look back at President Carter’s fight over energy brings some context to this situation. On April 18, 1977, 33 years ago, President Jimmy Carter gave a White House speech on energy and […]
5:15 It is generally bad news that Barney Frank is backing this effort to gut the Franken amendment. That’s the only serious reform effort on the table today, and for Frank to be coming out against it implies that he’s much more willing to do Wall Street’s dirty work in the conference committee than his […]
By and large, mayors are pragmatists. They’ve got snow to remove and potholes to fill, schools to run and crime to fight. Literally and figuratively, they must keep the trains running on time, or hear loudly and decisively from voters and constituents. That pragmatic spirit was evident on Monday, when the U.S. Conference of Mayors […]